Over at the Chain Reaction, our dear leader John Isaacs has compiled a very handy summary of the amendments offered to the Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was considered on the House floor last Thursday and Friday. Below is an excerpt from John’s blog highlighting the nuclear weapons and missile defense amendments. For our review of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) version of the bill, see here.
Do You Even Have to HASC: House Republicans Still Love the Bomb
Just when you thought the Republican-controlled House Armed Services Committee (HASC) couldn’t possibly go any crazier on nuclear weapons and missile defense, it doubled down on its fanaticism during last week’s mark up of the FY 2014 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The result is a bill that if passed into law would significantly weaken US national security.
Early in the morning of June 6th the Committee approved its version of the NDAA (H.R. 1960) by a vote of 59-2. The legislation authorizes $552.1 billion for national defense (function 050) and $85.8 billion for overseas contingency operations (largely for the war in Afghanistan), for a total of $637.9 billion. Like the President’s budget request, the Committee completely ignores sequestration.
While Committee Republicans warn that cuts to the defense budget are eroding the US military, they continue to insist on wasting millions of dollars to sustain an excessively large nuclear arsenal designed to confront Cold War threats that no longer exist. Spearheaded by Reps. Michael Turner (R-OH), Mike Rogers (R-AL), and Doug Lamborn (R-CO), the Committee’s iteration of the NDAA includes numerous profligate funding proposals and policy provisions on nuclear weapons and missile defense, such as:
- funding for a third national missile defense site on the East Coast of the United States that military leaders did not ask for and do not want;
- constraints on the Pentagon’s ability to implement New START in violation of our international obligations;
- limits on changes to US nuclear posture and further reductions below New START even if they may be in US security interests;
- money above the President’s budget request for the unrealistic and unaffordable B61 life extension program; and
- limits on the availability of funds for vital programs that reduce the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists and detect nuclear weapons tests.
The House passed defense authorization bills containing similarly flagrant constraints the previous two years, but due to opposition in the Senate, the final version of these bills either eliminated or significantly watered down the objectionable provisions. Expect the Senate to raise objections again this year, as the latest proposals once again defy national security and fiscal sense. The Senate Armed Services Committee is scheduled to mark up its version of the defense authorization bill later this week.
The White House is likely to threaten to veto the final version of this year’s NDAA if it includes many of the provisions contained in the Committee’s legislation, especially the limitations on New START implementation and further nuclear weapons reductions.
With the full House slated to debate the NDAA this week, expect House Democrats to submit amendments challenging the Strangelovian pathology of their Republican counterparts.
Head over the Center website to read the rest of the analysis.
Following Up on the Obama-Xi Summit: What’s Next for North Korea’s Nuclear Program?
Now that the shirtsleeves of President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping have been rolled back down, it is time to evaluate the fruits of this past weekend’s US-China summit, particularly with regards to North Korea. When compared with previous US-China meetings, there were no fashion faux pas, no hecklers, and no one accidentally referring to Xi’s home country as the “Republic of China.” Nonetheless, those looking for so-called “deliverables” on the North Korean issue were likely disappointed by the summit’s outcome.
Speaking to reporters on Saturday, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon said that, after a “lengthy discussion,” the two presidents “agreed that North Korea has to denuclearize…and that we should work together to deepen US-China cooperation and dialogue to achieve denuclearization.” While this is certainly not a negative development, it does not represent anything that the two sides have not said before, and falls somewhat short of hopes that the summit would yield a formal framework between the US and China on how the two countries plan to tackle the North Korean issue.
So, where does this leave us now? Without question, there are several reasons to be optimistic about the prospects of concrete US-China action vis-a-vis Pyongyang…
1. China’s Toughening Line on North Korea: I touched upon this in my previous post, but the Chinese government has recently given several indications that it plans to “get tough” with its provocative ally. Not only has the PRC privately pushed Pyongyang to return to six-party talks, but it has also backed up those insistences with more-concrete actions, such as supporting tougher UN sanctions, closing key North Korean bank accounts, and restricting the number of visas issued to North Korean guest workers.
2. China Has Very Good Reasons to Push for a Denuclearized North Korea: In an insightful post on his blog, Via Meadia, Walter Russell Mead argues that, besides the obvious rationale of wanting to avoid a nuclear-armed North Korea, China also has deeper reasons for wanting to denuclearize the Korean peninsula. As Mead astutely points out, a nuclear North Korea incentivizes Japan to build up its military strength, pushes Tokyo and Seoul deeper into the protective arms of the United States, and, I would add, lends further credence to the Obama administration’s “Asian pivot.” Given this, a case could certainly be made that it is in China’s geostrategic interests to push Pyongyang to denuclearize.
3. A Slightly-Less-Provocative Posture from North Korea: Though North Korea continues to repeat its commitment to maintaining a nuclear arsenal, it has, in recent weeks, avoided taking any overtly-provocative actions in the vein of its nuclear and missile tests from earlier this year. Moreover, tensions between North and South Korea seems to have cooled – the two sides recently re-opened a cross-border hotline, and met on Sunday to set up cabinet minister-level talks for later this week (though it now appears that that particular dialogue has been put on-hold).
But there are also a couple of reasons to be pessimistic:
1. How Hard is China Willing to Push? Yes, it is true that the PRC has toughened its stance towards North Korea in recent months. However, questions remain as to how much pressure Beijing is really willing to exert against its recalcitrant neighbor. The Chinese government’s fear of a North Korean collapse leading to chaos along the PRC/DPRK border, as well as resulting in a unified, US-allied Korea is an oft-cited (most recently by the AP’s Matthew Pennington) reason for Chinese inaction on the North Korean issue.
2. We’ve Been Here Before With North Korea: Avid Pyongyang-watchers will have to forgive me for seemingly stating the obvious, but here goes: historically, North Korea has had a tendency to engage in provocative behavior, dial down tensions and express a willingness to return to negotiations, only to later restart the cycle with another round of provocations. Thus, we should be careful of ascribing too much meaning to Pyongyang’s toned-down rhetoric, or its overtures to Seoul.
It’s smart to scale back nuclear weapons spending
I wrote my May Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists column on the inaccurate (and irrelevant) charges made by Senators Inhofe, Corker, and others that the Obama administration has broken a sacred vow to sustain and modernize the US nuclear arsenal. Here’…
Recommended Reading: The US-China Summit and North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Program
On Friday and Saturday, President Obama will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Sunnylands Resort in Rancho Mirage, California. Both governments have sought to portray this weekend as an opportunity for Obama and Xi to build their relationship on a more casual, informal level. This marks a departure from past US-China summits, which have been, for the most part, “dour, orchestrated affairs conducted by teams of men in dark suits.” However, while this has been billed as a “shirtsleeves summit,” that does not mean that important business is off the table. Rather, Obama and Xi are expected to discuss a range of issues highly relevant to the Sino-American relationship, including Chinese cyberespionage, territorial disputes in East Asia, and – most importantly in the eyes of Nukes of Hazard – North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
Below is a roundup of some relevant news stories and analyses that will give you a better idea of the current state of the US-China-North Korea triangle, and what to expect from this weekend’s summit.
China’s Hardening Stance Towards North Korea
North Korea’s nuclear test in February, coupled with its missile launches in May, have reportedly frustrated many Chinese officials, and have prompted the Chinese government to take a tougher line towards its longtime ally.
• As pointed out by a recent report from the Associated Press, while China remains wary of taking any actions that could result in a collapse of the North Korean regime, it has taken several punitive measures in response to the Kim government’s recent provocations, such as supporting tougher UN sanctions against North Korea in February, and shutting accounts that North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank had opened in Chinese state banks
• According to a June 4 article by Reuters’s Benjamin Kang Lim, during recent bilateral talks, the Chinese government implored North Korea to stop its nuclear and missile tests, which the PRC officials said “put China in a difficult position and are not conducive to (North) Korea.”
North Korea’s Continuing Defiance
However, despite increasing pressure from the US, China, and the rest of the international community, North Korea has given no indication that it plans to scale back its nuclear ambitions.
• From a May 27 article in the Wall Street Journal: “North Korea’s state media on Sunday reiterated Pyongyang’s commitment to building nuclear weapons, dousing limited hopes that the isolated state might engage in talks about its nuclear program under pressure from China.”
• On May 17, a UN panel found that international sanctions are, indeed, slowing down North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons. However, on June 3, a study from Johns Hopkins’s US-Korea Institute asserted that the DPRK could be able to restart production of plutonium in one or two months.
What Should/Will the “Shirtsleeves Summit” Accomplish?
The US-China-North Korea dynamic seems to be in a state of mild evolution. What does this mean for this weekend’s meeting between Presidents Obama and Xi? It depends on who you ask:
• Some analysts believe that the summit should serve merely as a foundation for future Sino-US cooperation on the North Korean issue:
— In a June 5 op-ed for The New York Times, Gi-Wook Shin, Thomas Fingar, David Straub argue that, “Obama should use this first encounter to focus on underscoring for Xi where U.S. and Chinese interests on the Korean Peninsula overlap,” in the hopes of creating a “trajectory of increasing Chinese cooperation in dealing with Pyongyang.”
• Other analysts believe that more substantive successes could be achieved at the summit:
— In an interview this past Tuesday with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, former US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell asserted that President Obama would see success on the North Korean issue, arguing that, “…the Chinese have just about have it with North Korea.”
• Others, however, are urging caution:
— Over at Foreign Policy, Issac Stone Fish writes that, “China watchers in Washington don’t expect much in the way of concrete ‘deliverables,” and quotes Asia expert Victor Cha as saying that, “We have plenty of things where we want nine yards, and we don’t get that – we get four yards, if we’re lucky.”
